The deployment of wireless local area networks (WLANs) in the home, the office, and various public facilities is commonplace today. Such networks typically employ a wireless access point (AP) that connects a number of wireless stations (STAs) in a specific locality (e.g., home, office, public facility, etc.) to another network, such as the Internet or the like.
In some IEEE 802.11-compliant WLAN networks, one or more STAs may set up direct communication channels to transmit data with each other without relaying the data through the AP. One such technology, Tunneled Direct Link Setup (TDLS), allows stations to connect directly to one another after they have joined a WLAN network with no user intervention.
To establish TDLS direct links, a TDLS-capable STA needs to obtain the status and capabilities of other STAs in the WLAN, including whether any of the other STAs are able to support TDLS. STAs usually must send specific discovery frames to each STA in the WLAN to make such determinations, which requires a minimum level of overhead in the process, such as transmission of TDLS discovery messages to STAs that are not TDLS-capable or are not associated with the same AP, which is not necessary.
For TDLS direct links, at least one of the STAs that use the TDLS link can enter a power-saving mode. In the TDLS power save mode, STAs can periodically sleep and wake up at scheduled times. However, there is no coordination between multiple TDLS direct links about individual STA scheduled wakeup times. This can lead to two active TDLS links having overlapping data transmission times while other periods are unused by any TDLS link, causing potential efficiency within the WLAN.